THE PROLONGATION OF HUMAN LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8020, 6 August 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PROLONGATION OF HUMAN LIFE.

The last report of tho Registrar-General in England furnishes fresh ovidonce of tho steady progress which is making in tho prolongation of human Ufa, especially through tho influence of sanitary measures adopted during the lant thirty yoars. The death rate for 18S6 was 193 per thousand of tho population, which waa lower than that recorded in any previoue year since the registration system waa started in 1837, with the two exceptions of 19 in ISSS and 18 9 in 18S1. The mean annual doath rate for tho nix years since 1880 did not excoed 19*3, which was 2-1 below the mean rato between 1840 and ISSO. Thia moans that 339,000 persons iu England and Wales wero alivo at the oni of those six years who would have been dead if tho rate of mortality whioh prevailed between 1870 and 18S0 had boen maintained. The reduction ia largely accounted for by tho falling off in the deaths from the principal zymotic or " filth diseases," which have sunk from an annual rate of 4"]5 por thoueaud, between 1860 and 1870, to 340 between 1870 and ISSO, and only 2.43 since ISSO. The proportion of infant mortality has altio been porcoptibly diminished, falling from an average of 149 per thousand births, dnring the ten years preooding 1880, to 141 in the six years since then. The birth rate itself laet year was only 32 4, which ia lower than in any year einoe IS4S, and the natural increase of population by the excess of births over deaths accordingly shows a decline from 375,922 in 1884 and b11,820 in 1885 to